By the Time They Came to Phoenix: African American Cotton Pickers in Arizona – Eloy

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

Featuring a documentary that tells the stories of early African American cotton pickers in El Mirage and in other regions of Arizona, this presentation explores the lives of African Americans who came to the cotton fields from Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma during the 1940s through the 1960s.  These individuals made significant cultural, historical, and […]

Free

Día de los Muertos: A Celebration of Life and Death

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

What is Día de los Muertos? Where did it come from, what are its roots? How do we celebrate it here in the U.S.? Día los Muertos or Days of the Dead is a significant and highly celebrated holiday in Mexico, Latin America, and Southwestern U.S. To understand Día de los Muertos one has to […]

Free

Art of the Internment Camps: Culture Behind Barbed Wire

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1942 WWII Executive Order 9066 forced the removal of nearly 125,000 Japanese-American citizens from the west coast, incarcerating them in ten remote internment camps in seven states: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. Government photographers Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and Ansel Adams documented the internment, and artists Toyo Miyatake, […]

Free

Saving the Great American West:  The Story of George Bird Grinnell

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

The great West that George Bird Grinnell first encountered in 1870 as a 21-year-old man was shortly to disappear before his eyes.  Nobody was quicker to sense the desecration or was more eloquent in crusading against the poachers, the hide-hunters, and the disengaged U.S. Congress than George Bird Grinnell, the “Father of American Conservation.”  Grinnell […]

Free

With a Beefsteak and a Cup of Coffee: The Harvey Girls in the Southwest

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

The Fred Harvey company operated its exceptional chain of restaurants and hotels along the Santa Fe Railway from 1876 through the 1960s. Among its many innovations was the employment of “Harvey Girl” waitresses: single women who chose to leave their families and adhere to strict lifestyle restrictions for the opportunity to work at respectable jobs. […]

Free

Steam and Steel Rails: The Arrival of the Railroad and Its Impact on Arizona

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

The building of the railroad across Arizona in 1879-1880 was a wonder of technology and human will. It created a series of small communities linked by their role in supporting that technology and the initiatives behind it. Overnight it transformed southern Arizona, including Vail, whose story resonates with many other southern Arizona communities.  Business and […]

Free

Eloy’s Gun and Cotton Stories: Romanticizing the Real

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

This presentation focuses on the lively and lawless days of Eloy, Arizona. Eloy might have had a reputation that rivaled that of Tombstone, with its killings, graft, good time houses, and mysterious murders. Explore this turbulent time in Territorial Eloy, when the influx of seasonal cotton pickers "raised hell" on the weekends.   Geta LeSeur […]

Free

Silver Images on Glass Plates: Early Photography in Arizona, 1850-1920

Eloy Santa Cruz Library 1000 N. Main St., Eloy, AZ, United States

Photographs have helped shape both historical and contemporary public perception of Arizona and the West. This program presents a chronological history and social development of photography in Territorial Arizona. Included are rare and unique historical images of daily life, public events, personalities, mining, Native Americans, and environment of early Arizona. Accompanying images are high-quality copies […]

Free

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